US NewsHow Trump Thinks He Can Outsmart Putin

Russia 'Has Leverage' Over Trump Foreign Policy Says ex-CIA Chief

The president's foreign policy is "totally at odds with what the U.S. intelligence community believes,” Jeremy Bash argued.

How he gets his information isn’t always clear. Some have noted that Trump comes to briefings with ideas that seem to have sprung from private phone Trump has avoided one-on-one clashes with Putin , most recently when he failed to tell the Russian leader during their phone call that he must not

Donald Trump is ending his presidential bid the same way he began it: defiant and provocative, breaking campaign norms and ignoring experts’ advice — and

Listening to President Donald Trump, he sounds like a heretic inside his own government: the lone official prepared to accept that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trustworthy and sincere.

Nikki Haley, the president’s former ambassador to the United Nations, last week called Putin an enemy. National Security Adviser John Bolton has labeled Putin a liar. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is meeting with Putin today in Sochi, Russia, recently accused Putin’s government of undermining Venezuela’s sovereignty.

Then there’s Trump, who seems hell-bent on turning the former KGB operative into a personal friend. In a phone call earlier this month, the pair amiably chewed over the finding from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report that the Trump campaign didn’t conspire with Russia during the 2016 election. In Trump’s telling, Putin “smiled” while confiding that the inquiry “started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse”—just a couple of intimates savoring Trump’s vindication.

Vladimir Putin to get late-night BBC 'chat show' - but is it fake news?

Vladimir Putin to get late-night BBC 'chat show' - but is it fake news?

If Mr. Putin were calling the shots, he would ensure that America’s reliability is doubted, its commitments broken, its values debased and its image tarnished. Now, as leaders of the Group of 7 nations gather in Quebec, President Trump says he thinks Russia should be readmitted.

Trump 's comments come months after he said he hopes Russia finds the Democrat's "missing" emails. Putin criticises Hillary Clinton for anti-Russian rhetoric in the US election campaign Vladimir Putin Directed How Hacking Material Was Used To Undermine US Election | MSNBC

It’s a mystery that has mushroomed since the 2016 campaign: What is the root of Trump’s deference toward Putin? Does the Russian leader have some sort of unseen hold over the 45th president? “I don’t know the answer to that,” former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, said last week at a CNN town hall.

But Trump might be motivated by something else, his allies and administration officials suggest. They see Trump following a “good-cop, bad-cop” playbook that is meant to sustain a necessary dialogue with the leader of a nuclear-armed adversary. Leave it to Bolton, Pompeo, and others to deliver the harsh message, the argument goes. They will, and they have. Trump, meanwhile, will see to it that relations at the top stay cordial.

The presidential faceplant: Vladimir Putin falls on his face in embarrassing tumble on carelessly positioned carpet while celebrating scoring eight goals in all-star hockey game

Footage from the match in Sochi shows the Russian leader skating into a red carpet laid out on the ice while taking a victory lap around the rink.

Donald Trump tells Larry King that Putin got Obama off the hook with Syria, but now has the upper hand with Syria. ED Sheeran is not who you think he is!

Now Trump might think he has out - thought Mattis by ordering the Troops in Syria. Putin doesn’t think a few steps ahead of you or me: he thinks whole boards ahead of you or me. By contrast, one of Trump ’s former college instructors famously characterized his former pupil as the dumbest student he

However, this interpretation assumes that Trump is operating not only with the best intentions, but also with a coherent strategy that belies his often improvisational, erratic style. And even if that were the case, such an approach has serious downsides: Trump winds up undercutting senior officials who are warning of dire threats that Russia poses to U.S. interests.

Foreign leaders are never sure who speaks for the U.S. government. And there’s a real chance that Trump’s overtures will boomerang. Some experts predict that Putin, hardly a naif on the world stage, will use Trump’s evident desire for better relations to wrest concessions from the White House. All of which means that Pompeo is walking straight into one of the central contradictions of the Trump presidency: the gap between Trump’s words and the government’s deeds.

“The notion that you’re going to say nice things about [Putin] and he is going to change his ways, I don’t see any evidence that’s ever worked,” says Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia during Barack Obama’s administration.

'He is a godsend!'– Local business are delighted with Trump’s investment in Doonbeg

'He is a godsend!'– Local business are delighted with Trump’s investment in Doonbeg

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump clears up his relationship with Vladimir Putin and gets critical of the media for "gaming the system" to slant debates against him .

Trump also said he had prodded NATO members to meet their defence spending commitments, generating “many billions of dollars ” in additional FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang

With FIFA President Gianni Infantino (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron (R) during the award presentation at FIFA World Cup final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia, on July 15, 2018.

Theresa May Will Still Be PM When Donald Trump Visits, Says Jeremy Hunt

Theresa May will still be prime minister when Donald Trump visits in June, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.

The report lays out in great detail how President Donald Trump repeatedly tried to interfere in the Following his meeting with Putin in Vietnam, Trump initially gave the impression that he accepted Finally, the sad fact in all of this is that the president is right to think we are going to need to work with

After his meeting with Putin in Vietnam, Trump initially gave the impression that he accepted Putin ’s assurances. The president later sought to clarify that he continued to accept the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies (“as currently led by fine people”) that Russia had interfered but thinks Putin

In a gym at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence in Sochi, Russia, on Aug. 30, 2015.

‘Vladimir Putin’ Talk Show in U.K. Prompts Sharp Intake of Breath in Russia

Whether it be the suspicion that he meddled in the Brexit referendum or the accusation that he ordered the poisoning of a former spy, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia stirs strong emotions in Britain.

While Trump sought to cast Putin as a better leader than then-President Obama, Ryan He told them how the Russians meddled in European politics and called for “unity” in addressing the threat Ryan mentioned his meeting with Groysman, prompting Rodgers to ask: “ How are things going in Ukraine

In this undercover footage taken at the G20 summit earlier today, we see Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin undertake a suspiciously smooth secret handshake

Seen with the then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (C) as they visited the Bakhchisaray Historical Cultural and Archaeological Museum-Preserve in Crimea. Putin, who shares a good rapport with the Italian politician, was seen out and about during Berlusconi's two-day visit to Crimea, on Sept. 12, 2015.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump talk "regularly," the Russian president told an Austrian news outlet ahead of his visit to Vienna Tuesday. The Russian leader was responding to a question about special counsel Robert Mueller's February indictment of 13 Russians and three

Putin has been even more careful with any advance pronouncements on policy. “I have never met Mr That said, Putin offered Trump a defense of sorts in saying that recent news reports, including But Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen

Rides with the Nochniye Volki (the Night Wolves) biker group at a motor bikers' festival in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, Russia, on Aug. 29, 2011.

Simon Coveney says Taoiseach is happy to meet Trump at Doonbeg

Simon Coveney has insisted there is ‘no row’ between Donald Trump and the Irish Government over US president’s proposed trip here next month.

Every minute with Putin is a battle. He ’s a skilled manipulator and negotiator. Psychological operations are his forte, whether it’s by bringing a dog to scare If President Trump continues to disregard and undercut his NSC and their analysis on what Putin will try to do pull at their Summit, he ’ll be reduced

Presents a book about his state residence in Zavidovo to Silvio Berlusconi (R) on Feb. 3, 2003.

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Administration officials say that perhaps, through personal diplomacy, Trump can coax Putin to meet U.S. goals, including dropping support for Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela and helping persuade North Korea to give up nuclear weapons. Still, some who’ve worked at the top levels of the administration concede that they’ve been baffled by Trump’s moves in the foreign-policy arena. How he gets his information isn’t always clear. Some have noted that Trump comes to briefings with ideas that seem to have sprung from private phone conversations with “people who want him to adopt a viewpoint that is sympathetic to Russia,” said one person familiar with the matter.

Trump has avoided one-on-one clashes with Putin, most recently when he failed to tell the Russian leader during their phone call that he must not interfere in the 2020 election. That wasn’t out of character. Trump’s habit has been to refuse to condemn Putin for election interference, most famously at a joint press conference in Helsinki over the summer.

“The president keeps coming back to the point that if he’s not engaging, you can be sure there’s going to be estrangement [with leaders] at the very upper level,” said an administration official, who like others we spoke with requested anonymity to talk more freely about internal deliberations. “So he is constantly of the opinion that you have to have a good relationship at the top.”

“He is a salesman,” said former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Trump-campaign supporter, last week at a conference in Las Vegas. “He is, at the core, a salesman who uses hyperbole to try to convince people of his position.”

Friendly overtures toward Putin aren’t new for an American president, a reality that Trump’s defenders periodically bring up. Yet Trump clearly hasn’t learned a key lesson from his predecessors: Others who courted the Russian leadership had little to show for it. Five months after taking office, former President George W. Bush met Putin at a summit in Slovenia and said later that he had gotten “a sense of his soul.”

“I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy,” Bush said. Yet relations began to sour following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, over Russian objections, and deteriorated further after Russia’s 2008 incursion into Georgia.

Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state, presented her Russian counterpart with a red “reset” button in 2009 in hopes of forging better ties. (Her aides got the translation wrong—the button actually said “overcharged” in Russian, an omen for the ill-fated “reset.”) When Clinton left the job in 2013, she sent Obama a letter warning that relations with Russia were poised to get worse.

Trump entered office in a political environment that made direct dealings with Putin risky. In the shadow of Mueller’s investigation, any contact between Trump and Putin was bound to be viewed with suspicion. Now that Mueller has finished his report and established no conspiracy between Russia and Trump-campaign officials, Trump has a freer hand to engage Putin, Trump administration officials say. Trump announced on Monday that he will meet with Putin next month at the G20 summit meeting in Japan.

In the meantime, Pompeo is set to meet Putin in his first visit to Russia. Asked on Monday what he wants Pompeo to tell Putin, the president said, “The message is that there has never been anybody so tough on Russia. But at the same time, we’re going to end up getting along with Russia.”

In practice, Trump’s government has been tougher on the country than his rhetoric would suggest. How the United States treats Russia more closely tracks the messages coming from Trump’s hawkish advisers. The administration, for example, has levied repeated rounds of sanctions against Russian entities or individuals, sometimes after being pushed by Congress. Those sanctions have covered cyberattacks, weapons proliferation, human-rights abuses, and aggression in Ukraine. And in some respects, the Trump administration has gone further to confront Russia than the Obama administration did.

For instance, the Trump administration approved the largest-ever sale of lethal weaponry to Ukraine since Russia’s 2014 incursion there, a step the Obama White House was reluctant to take. Somewhat incongruously for a president who has frequently questioned the value of NATO, his administration has overseen the deployment of thousands more U.S. troops to bolster the alliance’s eastern flank, expanding a policy Obama first laid out.

And the administration expelled some 60 Russian diplomats from the United States last March in a coordinated action with European partners, after accusing the Russians of poisoning a former Russian intelligence agent with a nerve agent in the United Kingdom. (Trump himself, however, was reportedly unhappy about the number.) In February, Trump withdrew from an arms-control treaty with Russia, citing repeated Russian violations.

“I think people misunderstand how strong this administration has been against Russia,” Haley said last week, at the same conference where Christie spoke. “I’ve seen it. They put sanctions on Russia. They expelled diplomats that were spies. [Trump] gave arms to Ukraine, which infuriated Russia. We also saw the fact that we increased our energy production, which hurts Russia. We are strengthening our military, which Russia hates. I think the reason people think that he’s not hard on Russia is maybe because of his tone.”

Haley was defending the administration, but she hit on an important problem. Trump’s tone is inescapable, and it continues to feed doubts about his commitment to hold Russia to account. McFaul noted to us the fact that the Trump administration has continued or even intensified some of Obama’s Russia policies in the areas of sanctions, strengthening NATO, and aiding Ukraine.

“The problem,” McFaul said, “is that in all three of those dimensions, it’s not clear to me that President Trump supports any of them.” In yet another example of Trump undercutting his administration’s overall strategy, Trump has built up forces in eastern Europe and sanctioned Russia over its annexation of Crimea, but he’s also declined to answer whether he would recognize the annexation, and reportedly pointed out that the Ukrainian peninsula’s residents speak Russian.

Born on June 14, 1946, in New York City, New York, U.S., to real estate developer Frederick Trump and Mary McLeod, Trump graduated in 1968 from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania with a a degree in economics. He was eligible for the draft lottery during the Vietnam War, but a combination of student and medical deferments disqualified him from service.

Early in his career, Trump invested $70,000 in a Broadway comedy – “Paris Is Out” – which remains his only producer credit for theatricals to date; the play was a flop. The next year, he began his real estate career – he joined his father’s company, Elizabeth Trump & Son.

By 1971, he’d moved to Manhattan and was handling some of the largest and most profitable building projects in the city. He was given full control of the company later that year.

The future U.S. president spent the ‘70s networking and making connections with some of New York’s most influential people. Focused on maximizing profits, he involved himself in large-scale building projects in Manhattan and, by 1980, opened the Grand Hyatt Hotel next to the Grand Central Station. He also secured the Fifth Avenue site that would go on to house Trump Tower.

In 1977, Trump married Ivana Zelníčková, a New York-based fashion model. Born on Feb. 20, 1949, Zelníčková was briefly considered for Czechoslovakia’s skiing team at the 1972 Winter Olympics. The couple had two sons – Donald Jr. and Eric, as well as a daughter, Ivanka.

Trump Tower – a $200 million apartment-retail complex - was opened in 1983 and generated considerable national attention. The 58-story structure features a grand atrium, a 60-foot-high (18.3 meters) waterfall, luxurious apartments and retail stores.

Looking to profit off the growing casino market, Trump acquired and re-built the Taj Mahal (pictured), a hotel and casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for a rumored $1.2 billion. It was relaunched as the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in 1990.

In May 2017, Trump reportedly sold the hotel, which he earlier labeled the "eighth wonder of the world," for $50 million.

He continued to buy new business ventures and diversify his holdings, acquiring Eastern Air Lines Shuttle for $365 million in 1989 and renaming it Trump Shuttle. Three years later, his dream of an uber-expensive airline service ran out of cash and defaulted on its debt.

Following the real estate slump of the late 1980s and early '90s, Trump’s empire took a hit and sustained itself almost wholly on loans. His own valuation of the company was $1.5 billion; Forbes’ valued it at only a third of that figure.

In 1991, Trump divorced Ivana and, two years later, married American actress Marla Maples. The marriage lasted for four years before Trump filed for divorce in 1997. The divorce was finalized in 1999 and Maples received $2 million under the prenuptial agreement. Together, they have a daughter, Tiffany.

Trump’s first serious stab at entering politics was on Oct. 7, 1999, when he formed an exploratory committee to decide on seeking the Reform Party’s candidacy for the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

The businessman, who claimed he could achieve universal healthcare and eliminate national debt as president, named popular talk show host and media magnate Oprah Winfrey as his ideal running mate. His campaign never went beyond this phase – he failed to gain support for his bid.

Between 2004 and 2015, Trump hosted and starred in the NBC reality TV series “The Apprentice” (2004-15; pictured), a show on which three of his children – Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric – also made appearances.

In 2012, Trump considered entering politics yet again – another run for president. However, his reputation took a hit after he associated himself with the “Birther” movement – a group that believed then-U.S. President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the country.

(Pictured) With Obama during Trump's presidential inauguration in January 2017.

On June 16, 2015, Trump announced a run for the Republican ticket for the 2016 presidential election. One of the more controversial candidates in recent times, he dominated media coverage with outrageous comments about fellow candidates and contentious immigration policies.

On May 26, 2016, Trump received the support of 1,238 delegates and secured the Republican Party’s nomination for the next presidential race. He beat U.S. Senators Ted Cruz (Texas), Marco Rubio (Florida) and Ohio Governor John Kasich, among others, and was confirmed as their nominee on July 19.

On Nov. 9, Trump defeated Clinton to become the 45th U.S. President. In a close battle, the 70-year-old candidate won more than the required number of Electoral College votes but lost the popular vote.

Trump’s presidential inauguration was on Jan. 20, 2017, and, in his first week as U.S. president, he signed six Executive Orders, including the reinforcement of border security and the planning of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In March 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13780, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, which limited travel into the U.S. from certain countries. It also limited the inflow of refugees without valid travel documents.

In September that year, he signed Presidential Proclamation 9645, which expanded on the previous order. It restricted travel from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

In December, the Supreme Court allowed the ban to go into full effect, pending legal challenges.

Rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change and asserting that the Paris Agreement would do very little to ease global warming, Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the climate accords in June 2017, making his nation the only one in the world to not ratify the agreement.

In the same month, he also signed Space Policy Directive 1, which marked a change in the nation's space policy. It would now allow an U.S.-led integrated program with partners from the private sector, ensuring another human landing on the Moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond.

In January 2018, Trump delivered his first State of the Union Address, where he called on all politicians to "summon the unity" necessary to fix the country's infrastructure and flawed immigration systems.

During his time as a running Presidential candidate, Trump said he intended to roll back the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allowed people who illegally entered or stayed in the U.S. as minors to receive a renewable period of deferred action from deportation (for two years) and also be eligible for a work permit.

In September 2017, the Trump administration announced DACA would be repealed after six months, which led to nationwide protests.

In January 2018, after a number of flip-flops on the decision, the White House finally agreed to release a "legislative framework" outlining a compromise on DACA, provided a considerable amount (around $30B) is appropriated for the border wall.

Trump’s foreign policies have grabbed eyeballs (and controversy) across the world. These include working on relations with Cuba, the violence-marred shifting of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and trying to lift sanctions against Russia.

However, none of these have quite transfixed the world as the attempt solve the North Korea crisis. In July 2017, under the supervision of its leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The following month, Trump warned Kim that further provocations would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

By March the following year, after a historic summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the White House confirmed Trump would meet Kim in Singapore in June. True to his negotiating style, the U.S. president then threatened to pull out of the meeting before appearing to relent and re-confirm the potentially world-changing June 12 meet.

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Another consideration: Flattering Putin is likely to backfire, McFaul said. “With a guy like Putin, there’s going to be a price for good relationships,” he said. “He’s going to say to Trump, ‘You know what? I want to be your friend. I want a closer relationship between the U.S. and Russia. And you know what we need to do to get that? You need to lift sanctions.’ By defining good relations as the objective, it can lead to these detrimental outcomes.”

The risk of diminishing advisers and confusing foreign officials was clear from the Trump-Putin phone call on May 3. Trump would later tell reporters that Putin had assured him that Russia “is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela”—an assertion that contradicted Pompeo’s insistence that Russia has indeed intervened and is dictating Maduro’s moves.

“To have it happen so consistently where the secretary of state, or secretary of defense, or the national security adviser go out and take a principled position and try to drive that home and is undercut by the president, that makes the government ineffective,” says Nicholas Burns, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a former undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Bush administration. “And if you’re the president, it makes him ineffective because it confuses the rest of the world about your true intentions.”

As Pompeo sits down with Putin in Sochi, he has vowed to raise issues including election interference, even as he declared in remarks with his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Tuesday, “I’m here today because President Trump is committed to furthering this relationship.”

Looming over the meeting, though, is Trump, whose conciliatory rhetoric could complicate Pompeo’s chances for a breakthrough. “People wonder, Is the president feckless; is he undisciplined; does he mean what he says? If he’s soft with Putin, is that actually American policy?” Burns asked. “Because Pompeo and Bolton have been appropriately tough. So it really hurts the president in the final analysis.”

Simon Coveney says Taoiseach is happy to meet Trump at Doonbeg.
Simon Coveney has insisted there is ‘no row’ between Donald Trump and the Irish Government over US president’s proposed trip here next month.

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